Eleanor de Clare

Eleanor de Clare (3 October 1292-30 June 1337) was the wife of Hugh Despenser and later William Mortimer.

Biography
Eleanor was born on 3 October 1292 in Glamorgan, Wales, the daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester and Joan of Acre. She was from the English Catholic House of Clare. Her father died while she was three, and she inherited her father's estates when her brother Gilbert de Clare was killed at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. She had an advantageous marriage with Hugh Despenser, the son of Earl Hugh of Winchester, but her husband was the gay lover of King Edward II of England, which led to rebellions in 1321 and 1326 against Edward. In 1326 her husband was captured by Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer and was gruesomely executed, and Eleanor was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1329, she was abducted by William Mortimer, one of her husband's captors, and she married him. King Edward III of England seized their land and ordered for them to be arrested, and in 1329 she was captured but freed in 1330 after paying a large sum of money. She died in June 1337 a few months after Mortimer's death.